Study suggests quality-of-life disparity creates 'five Californias'

In California there are high highs and low lows. It has experienced some of the things coming to the rest of the nation, particularly demographic shifts. One of the biggest things is the growth of the Latino population in the state.

The contrast in quality of life for Californians is as varied as its topography. That's according to "A Portrait of California," a report released Tuesday by the American Human Development Project, which measures social well-being based on health, education and income, rather than how well the state is doing financially.

"We need to move beyond our extreme reliance on economic metrics," said one of the study's authors, Sarah Burd-Sharps.

At a presentation Tuesday in Sacramento, Burd-Sharps said one of the triggers for the study was the fact that California's gross domestic product increased by 133 percent since 1980, while the median household income has risen by only 38 percent.

Burd-Sharps called the study a "GDP for ordinary people."

Established in 2007 by the Social Science Research Council, the project chooses one state every year for intensive study as it updates its national data. California is the third state to be researched, following Mississippi and Alabama.

Burd-Sharps said California was selected for the 2011 study because it is ahead of the curve in terms of where the nation's human element is heading.

"In California there are high highs and low lows," Burd-Sharps said. "It has experienced some of the things coming to the rest of the nation, particularly demographic shifts. One of the biggest things is the growth of the Latino population in the state."

The study examined each human micro-climate in terms of income, health and education, then ranked each on a 1-10 scale.

According to the report, the state scored 5.56 on the overall Human Development Index ranking, while Ventura County communities ranged from 4.33 in Oxnard to 7.48 for Thousand Oaks.

The well-being of all California residents was so disparate that the study suggested there are "five Californias" — with three existing in Ventura County.

At the top of those five is "Silicon Valley Shangri-La," where the median income is $63,000 and 70 percent of the residents hold at least a bachelor's degree.

Next is "Metro-Coastal Enclave California," where the median income is about $46,000.

"Those people are affluent and credentialed and resilient to the inevitable ups and downs of life," Burd-Sharps said. "They have self-confidence, decent health and are usually living in the suburbs or city."

Thousand Oaks falls into this category, according to Patrick Guyer, the American Development Project's chief statistician for California.

Next in the pecking order is "Main Street California," which, according to Guyer, describes Moorpark, Simi Valley and Ventura.

"This describes about 40 percent of California," Burd-Sharps said. "They are largely middle class, living in suburban areas and just beyond the suburbs."

Another 40 percent make up "Struggling California," which is concentrated in suburbs and rural areas of the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. In Ventura County, it describes Oxnard, El Rio, Fillmore and Santa Paula. The median income in these areas is about $25,000.

At the bottom is the "Forsaken Five Percent," which are in pockets of Los Angeles and dotted around the Imperial and San Joaquin valleys.

Ventura County had neither Shangri-La nor the Forsaken Five within its boundaries.

The researchers did not do county-by-county research but studied 233 neighborhoods defined by the U.S. Census.

"Counties here span an incredibly wide range in population, from 10 million in L.A. County to about 1,000 in Alpine County," Guyer said.

The American Human Development Index is a composite measure of well-being and opportunity. It combines indicators in three fundamental areas — health, knowledge and standard of living — into a single number that falls on a scale from 0 to 10. Here is how communities in Ventura County rank, compared to California and the U.S.

Oxnard: 4.33

Santa Paula to Los Padres (including El Rio, Ojai, Fillmore): 4.83

U.S.: 5.17

California: 5.56

Ventura: 6.03

Moorpark/Simi Valley: 6.19

Ventura Southeast (Camarillo, Somis, and parts of Moorpark): 6.97

Thousand Oaks: 7.48

— Source: The American Human Development Project, an initiative of the Social Science Research Council.

Speaking Tuesday at the presentation in Sacramento, the CEO of United Ways of California, Peter Manzo, said the value of the study is that it shows the interconnectedness of these three life staples: health, education and income."To address any one area individually, you need to see and address the links among all of them," Manzo said.

Dr. Russell Rumberger of The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UC Santa Barbara agreed.

Rumberger, who conducted a large-scale study on the dropout rate in California, said we should all be concerned with the lack of equality in education because a good education sets the trajectory for a healthy and happy life and a more robust state.

"You have to look at education as an investment, especially in K-12 but also in higher education," he said. "We're home to a lot of innovative companies. We're going to lose that edge if we don't produce enough college graduates."

Poor social economic conditions fuel what the study called the "fatal four" health risks: smoking, poor diet, excessive drinking, and lack of exercise.

Longevity fell along ethnic lines. The average life span of white (non-Latino) Californians was 79.3 years, compared with 83.1 years for Latinos. Asians had the longest life expectancy at 86.1 years, and African Americans had the shortest at 73.3 years.

The foreign-born outlive the native-born by almost four years, the report said.

Oxnard, with its majority Latino population and many recent immigrants, had a higher health score than Thousand Oaks, which has a largely white, non-Latino population.

Ventura County Public Health Officer Dr. Robert Levin said any doctor who has a diverse patient population won't be surprised.

"Foreign-born people live longer than native born," Levin said. "I've always guessed it's because America is a high-stress society. We stress about everything. ... That stress causes a lot of wear and tear on people's bodies. Cancer risk and stroke risk goes up."

Burd-Sharps said she hopes the study launches some public policy dialogue among lawmakers, citizens and philanthropic organizations.

"Often, the way the pie is divided is not an efficient allocation of resources," she said. "The way the pie is divided needs to be seriously examined."